5th June

The building is an incredible bit of architecture - all glassy and very open - a large part of the ‘ground floor’ floor is glass showing the active archaeological site above which this huge building is suspended.

We eat and drink (but mostly sit) on the second floor terrace looking up at the hill we had just descended.

The top floor of the museum is dedicated to the Parthenon - The place is built to the same scale with aluminium columns reflecting the marble columns - the bas-relief friezes are matched to the positions they were on the original in huge rectangle; similarly the remains of the statues from each side are placed in the same relative positions. The walls are entirely glass so you can see the real thing above you orientated in the same way as this display and on the same scale - brilliant design - direct representation of scale and orientation only displaced by some 300m laterally and 100m downwards.

The reliefs are a display of the great procession held every four years when everyone and their horses and goat and oxen for sacrifice marched through the city and up the road to the acropolis. It’s detailed and real with lots of stuff - marshalls directing, horses scratching, maidens carrying wine, squires helping their lords with difficult horses and at the climax politicians discussing stuff and the gods assembled.

Most of the reliefs are real; some are accurate copies of those ‘stolen’ by Lord Elgin and currently in the british museum; a few have been lost entirely. Little impressive remains of the statues but one still gets a sense of their grandeur.